A six-story tenement house will be built between Smolna and Aleje Jerozolimskie, whose form will refer to the building that stood there before the war. Restaurants and cafes are planned on the ground floor, and apartments for rent on the upper floors.
Our reader noticed the fenced plot at the corner of Smolna and Aleje Jerozolimskie, in the immediate vicinity of the de Gaulle roundabout. “The square has been fenced with a tin fence. Construction is being prepared,” he wrote.
According to the information board placed on the tin fence, an “apart-hotel service building with services on the ground floor, an underground garage and a supplementary residential function” will be built in this place. The investor of the construction is NDI Smolna – a special purpose vehicle of NDI Development. This is a well-known developer, especially in the Tri-City, whose portfolio also includes projects from Warsaw: the Kapriola housing estate in Wilanów and the massive headquarters building of PKO Bank Polski at the intersection of Puławska and Goworka, built in the late 1990s.
Fenced plot at Smolnatvnwarszawa.pl
A reference to pre-war buildings
NDI Smolna informed us that preparations for the construction of a tenement house have begun near de Gaulle Roundabout. The construction site has been cleared, and boards with archival photos and information about the past and future of this place will soon appear on the fence. The developer presents the investment as a step towards the reconstruction of the Smolna frontage destroyed during World War II. The tenement houses from numbers 17 to 25, burned during the Warsaw Uprising, were never rebuilt. In their place, a green square was created.
The tenement house at 23 Smolna Street before World War IIFiles of the city of Warsaw – Dimensions Department/warszawa.ap.gov.pl
– We really want the new building to be part of the history of this place. Therefore, the investment design refers to architectural elements that were characteristic of construction before World War II. Also, the location of the planned new tenement house almost coincides with the location of the tenement house that existed here already in the 19th century – said Jarosław Bator, president of NDI Smolna, quoted in the company's announcement.
Tenement house Smolna 23 on visualizationsNDI Smolna
Construction will take two years
The authors of the architectural concept of the Smolna 23 tenement house were inspired by archival photos of the street. Ultimately, it is to create a compact frontage. For now, it will be free-standing. It is intended to refer to the building that stood in this place before the war, among others: the proportion of windows, their arrangement on the facade, details and decorations of the facade. The tenement house will have six floors.
– The form referring to the history of the place stands on a modern, minimalist glass block, which creates a transparent ground floor. The last withdrawn floors also have a modern form, large wide glazing and economical tectonics of the elevation – described Mariusz Lewandowski from the SAMI Architekci studio, which designed the tenement house.
Jarosław Bator pointed out that there will be restaurants on the ground floor of the tenement house. – There will be rental apartments on the upper floors, and the top floor may serve typical residential functions – said Bator.
Construction and obtaining occupancy permits are expected to take two years.
Smolna 23 tenement house on visualizationsNDI Smolna
Councilors are demanding parking in Kabaty Mateusz Szmelter, tvnwarszawa.pl
Main photo source: NDI Smolna